When you do that, you need to make sure you're reaping your task kids. Remember that pipe-opens and fork-opens also generate kids that may not be part of your "30 count".

A better way is to fork your kids, noting their pid as keys in a hash. When you reap a kid, delete it from the hash. If it wasn't part of the hash, it won't affect the count. Then fork new kids (on the block? {grin}) until your hash has 30 keys again.

I've done this for at least one of my columns, but after 106 by-lines, I can't remember which one anymore. {grin}

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker